


Mirrors Don't Lie

by ClockworkDinosaur



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Minor Barry Bluejeans/Lup, Minor Julia Burnsides/Magnus Burnsides, One Shot, Stolen Century, Story and Song, taakitz is the main focus, there's a good amount of blupjeans too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-11 02:24:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15962672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkDinosaur/pseuds/ClockworkDinosaur
Summary: On the home plane of the Starblaster crew, when soulmates looked into a mirror at the same time they would see each other rather than their own reflection. They thought that particular bit of magic died with their home, but an unexpected pairing proves that they still carry it with them.





	Mirrors Don't Lie

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this at 2am and it's one of my first TAZ fics so!! please be gentle but also feel free to leave constructive criticism!! i don't know if anyones done this kind of soulmate AU before so i hope it works and is interesting kgfdsj

                The Starblaster gleamed in the morning sunlight. It hovered over an expanse of blue-green ocean waters that stretched from horizon to horizon and glimmered like fishes’ scales. Even after half a year, the view was still a pleasant one to wake up to, one that Taako could appreciate even as the last tendrils of sleep released him and left his body sluggish and mind hazy.

                Morning Taako was an entirely different creature from Daytime Taako- not to mention Evening and Nighttime Taako. But Morning Taako could hardly even be considered a functional member of society.

                Not that it mattered much when “society” consisted of seven yahoos from a dead planet on a spaceship hovering above a planet filled with water-dwelling animals unfriendly to air-breathers.

                Thankfully, all it took for him to flip that switch between “cranky wizard” and “ethereal being of class” was one cup of coffee and an hour to put on his face. It was a demanding process, he thought to himself with a sigh as he rolled himself out of bed and into a soft robe. Being the most perfect creature on the ship wasn’t-

                As soon as he walked into the shared kitchen, Taako’s mind was cruelly forced onto another matter: wondering if throwing himself off the Starblaster would be worth it, if only to remove the sight of Merle’s bare ass from his mind.

                Merle, his white hair pulled into a high bun and tied with a green ribbon that matched his entirely too short shirt, stood in front of the pantry with his arms crossed and eyes narrowed in concentration.

                “Hi, Merle? Hey Merle? What the fuck?” Taako said, tone bordering on shrill.

                Merle turned- and Taako braced himself, only to be flooded with relief to find the front of the shirt was longer than the back- and offered a bright smile.

                “Mornin’!” said Merle, as chipper as always. Taako narrowed his eyes.

                “Listen, I’m a fashion over function type on any other day, but I will pay you to put on literally any pair of pants you can get your nasty little hands on as soon as possible.”

                “It’s laundry day,” he explained with a shrug that was probably meant to be apologetic. Six months on the ship and Merle still managed to wait until the last possible second to do his laundry. Taako groaned and did his best to ignore Merle as he made coffee.

                Lucretia, seated at the dining table as she idly scribbled in a journal, apparently had the same idea. She greeted Taako with a grunt but was entirely engrossed in her writings. That was fine with Taako- in the mornings he was hardly a conversationalist. The coffee pot was tiny, only good for two cups. He prepared two mugs, both with just a bit of cream and sugar. Perfect.

                He carried the mugs back to the cabin he shared with Lup. She was far quicker getting ready in the morning, though they both took longer than anyone else. What he expected to see when he opened the door to the shared cabin was Lup, sitting at the wide vanity mirror and applying makeup or brushing her hair.

                What he walked in on instead was Lup pacing. She was radiating nervous energy as she tore from one end of the room to the other, still dressed in her sleep shorts and t-shirt and her dyed waves of hair still pulled into a messy ponytail. The moment she spotted Takko, she all but pounced on him.

                “Taako, I saw him,” she said urgently, her gold eyes wide.

                “Who, Merle? Unfortunately, so did I.”

                “No! In the mirror.” She stepped back and crossed her arms as realization dawned on Taako.

                “What? I- No. In the mirror? I thought that was a thing exclusive to home,” he said haltingly. He passed Lup her mug as he went to sit at the vanity. His own reflection stared him down critically, joined by Lup a moment later.

                “You’re not going to believe who I saw,” she said after a second of intense focus on the glass passed.

                “You recognized him?” He turned to her with raised eyebrows. “You’re saying you saw your soulmate like how we did on our dead home planet, and it just so happened that you recognized him? What are the fuckin’ odds?”

                “Oh, it gets wilder,” she said. “It was Barry.”

                _“Barold?”_ Taako all but yelled. She clapped a hand over his mouth and glared.

                “Yeah,” she said. “And I just- I don’t know what to do,” she said. She seemed to deflate, all her nervous energy expended.

                “Have you talked to him?” Taako asked. “I mean, now that you know you’re soulmates.”

                Lup groaned, setting her mug aside and burying her face in her pillow. “No.”

                Taako leaned to the side to catch a glimpse of her face. “Are you, I dunno, disappointed?”

                “I’m not,” she said, and there was a hesitant sureness in her words. “I’ve always thought he was pretty cute- “

                “Gross. Please get some standards.”

                “-and knowing we’re fated to be a thing is… actually kind of relieving. I spent so long thinking that maybe my soulmate was gone, yknow?”

                “Yeah,” Taako said quietly. “So… talk to him?”

                Lup was still, then nodded slowly. “I will… eventually.”

                “So you’re going to ignore this and dance around it for the next five hundred years,” Taako said sarcastically. “Please, I’m begging you- don’t make me bear witness to that.”

                Lup laughed. “I will, when I’m ready.”

                “Fine Lulu, be lame then,” Takko said with a huff, then nudged her to show he was teasing. “It’s pretty wild that you two, in all this time, had never looked in a mirror at the same time,” he said thoughtfully.

                “It’s not like he spends his time gazing into mirrors,” she pointed out.

                “Right, for sure. Otherwise he wouldn’t look so goofy looking.”

                A solid whack to the back of the head with a pillow nearly sent his coffee flying from his hands. They were both laughing, even as Taako swallowed the sinking feeling that he might be alone forever, that his soulmate may have been sucked into the darkness that chased them year after year. Lup was lucky enough to have her soulmate onboard- one of the seven remaining inhabitants of their home. Such luck wouldn’t strike twice, and Taako couldn’t imagine any of the others being his soulmate anyway.

                He hit Lup in the stomach with his pillow and tried not to think anymore.

 

                Cycles passed- years that seemed both eternal and mere blinks of time. Lup and Barry decided to keep their soulmate status to themselves, and to let things progress naturally. In Taako’s unasked opinion, they were taking things too slow- even when Barry clumsily asked for his help, Taako encouraged him to take the leap.

                And then, during diner one evening, Magnus cleared his throat. He had been quiet up until then, seemingly lost in thought.

                “I’m not sure what to make of this,” he started gruffly, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “But, I saw a woman. In the mirror. The most breathtaking woman I’ve ever seen. I don’t know who she is or where she is, but it was just like the stories from home.” He paused, looking around at the shocked faces around the table. “I haven’t met her yet, but I know I love her.”

                Instant yelling. Lucretia and Davenport hurled questions, Barry congratulated, Merle voiced his confusion, and Lup and Taako met eyes, shock mirrored on their faces.

                The idea that some still had soulmates were out there, despite not being from their planet, was nearly inconceivable. It was also thrilling, and there was a blooming hope that maybe all was not lost for Taako.

 

                Nearly a century of cycles passed. Years blurred into one another, the deaths he endured the only solid bookmarks of time passed. Taako wasn’t sure how much longer any of them could run. The past few years had seemed more somber, even as they planed their offensive strategies against The Hunger. Lucretia made spells, Lup and Barry took measures that Taako still found beyond disconcerting, and the rest did their best just to survive.

                The plane they found themselves in was extremely foggy. Looking out the window yielded no view aside from on unsettling blank whiteness. It had made searching for the Light difficult, bringing morale down even further.

                Taako was alone in his room, absentmindedly braiding his hair. Despite the lack of interesting scenery, he still gazed out the window, his mind a million miles away. He was exhausted, his sleep the night before light and easily disturbed. The day seemed to drag on.

                He turned his attention back to his hair. It was getting almost unmanageably long- he would have to get Lup to cut it soon. She was the only person who knew how to get it exactly how he liked it, just as he knew exactly how to cut her hair. They got each other’s backs, and their exact style tastes and preferences. A perfect pair.

                He glanced up for a moment.

                A face that was not his own, surrounded by a room that was completely unfamiliar, greeted him in the vanity mirror. His heart seemed to stop and in surprise he pushed himself away from the vanity, the chair clattering to the floor.

                The man Taako glimpsed was handsome, though an entirely different kind of handsome from himself. Where he was all sharp, fine angles and golden-brown coloring, the other man was dark, refined, and strong- a wide jaw and big red eyes, dark skin and dark hair threaded with silver ribbon.

                At least, that’s what Taako gathered from his quick glimpse. He scrambled back to the mirror to look again, and then stopped cold.

                The handsome man was gone, and in his place was a skeleton. It was dressed in a black robe, the hood pulled up and casting eerie shadows into the empty eye sockets. It managed to look just as surprised as the man had. And then Taako was looking at himself, breathing heavily staring with burning intensity at the glass that had become nothing more than what it was- a mirror.

                The door burst open and then Lup was there, concern written across her features. “What’s goin’ on? I heard something fall.”

                “I saw- there was a _fucking skeleton_ ,” Taako said as he jabbed a finger at the mirror, aware of just how unhinged he sounded. “I saw a hot dude, and then he turned into a skeleton.”

                “You… your soulmate is a skeleton?” she asked incredulously.

                “Unless I spontaneously lost all my skin and meat, yeah!” The realization that it really was his soulmate he saw did not make what he saw any less confusing.

                But the face he saw before- lips parted, eyes wide and framed by gorgeous thick lashes- was one Taako found himself turning over in his mind. It hit him that he would do anything to see that face again; whether he was driven by curiosity or something far more emotional he couldn’t tell.

                He needed to see him again.

 

                The cycles ended, though Taako soon forgot what that meant, and a decade began in a home that never seemed quite right. Like there was a darkness over his vision, a curtain that he could never tear away.

                Until there wasn’t. Memories- the ship, Lup, the century of running, the stories and magics brought from a world that no longer existed and didn’t fit into the narrative of the world they found themselves in- it all flooded back. Feelings of betrayal of bereavement were at the forefront of Taako’s mind until Lup was back, glowing and grinning her mischievous grin as if no time at all had passed.

                And then- Kravitz. His expression was ecstatic and relieved as Taako barreled into him, their lips meeting like it was the most natural thing in the world. Remembering the face in the mirror, Taako realized it _was_ the most natural thing- through it all, the century of uncertainty and the decade of hardship, they still found each other. Soulmates- mirrored spirits that reflected the best in the other, even when separated by planes and decades.

                Fate, for all it did to keep them apart, still had a funny way of bringing them back together again.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are cool ;0c


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